Food: Clean-eating sweet potato cheddar rolls

Clean eating. There are so many levels of clean eating, but what I mean be clean eating is homemade, non-processed, whole food goodness. Or, at least "kind-of-good"-ness. Because, let's be honest, when you're first starting out on a journey of clean eating there are times when you would give anything for something processed with a lot of sodium or high fructose corn syrup. But I digress...

I found these rolls on Clean Eating Magazine's website, and changed it just a bit. They're called chipotle cheddar sweet potato muffins. I photographed my journey, and have it displayed below. I have to admit, I had a horrible cold when I made these, so didn't have the best sense of taste. My husband rated them at a 4/5 stars. Very filling, but not amazing plain.

Ingredients:
1 sweet potato, peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes
1/2 cup low-fat buttermilk (I used lemon juice and milk substitute)
1 egg lightly beaten
1/2 cup shredded low-fat cheddar cheese (I used half pepper jack)
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp chipotle chile powder (I only had normal chili powder, not chipotle chili)
1 tsp baking powder
1tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder

Preheat oven to 375 degrees f. In a small sauce pot add sweet potato and cold water, and bring to a boil. Boil until fork tender, drain, then mash. Add buttermilk and stir until well combined. Mix in the egg and cheese, then set aside. In a separate bowl, mix remaining ingredients, then add half to sweet potato mixture and fold in. Repeat with second half of flour mixture. Spoon batter into muffin tins to almost full. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Let cool for 5 minutes, then enjoy. Store in air-tight container in fridge for up to a week.

So, I doubled the recipe, since I figured making it once would be easier than twice. Once I got the sweet potatoes on the stove, I shredded the cheese.

 Turns out I didn't have chipotle chili powder, so I thought using pepper jack for half the cheese in the recipe would be good.

The dry ingredients...

I used a buttermilk substitute, since I didn't have buttermilk or the inclination to go buy some for this recipe. 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar in the bottom of a measuring cup, then fill milk to the 1 cup line and allow to sit for 5 minutes will give you a good sub.

Here are the mashed potatoes

Here they are with everything added to them

And here they are coming out of the oven! They were pretty yummy, and went very well with our salad that night. However, they are much, much easier to get out of the muffin tin if the tin is sprayed with cooking spray first. Hate to point out the obvious, but since it wasn't explicitly stated in the recipe, I didn't think to spray the tin until about 10 muffins into it, which made for a fun project once they came out of the oven.